As China prepares to resume bilateral human rights dialogues with Western governments, a human rights advocate reflects on what such dialogues can achieve. Experience tells us that dialogues cannot immediately solve China’s human rights problems, but they can increase transparency — especially about prisoners of conscience.
The Pacific Alliance Treaty Organization: A Proposal
As the pandemic subsides and public confidence in his presidency grows, President Biden should consider how his administration might advance peace, prosperity, and stability in the world. Establishing a Pacific Alliance Treaty Organization (PATO) would advance all three. PATO would provide for collective security and embed key governance principles in a contested region.
Vietnam’s Closing Legal Space for Civil Society
Reassessing Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Tribunal
On December 23, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Tribunal issued its final, written judgment in the case against Khieu Samphan, affirming his convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity, and other international crimes, as well as his life sentence. The judgment brought to a close the tribunal’s judicial proceedings and marked the improbable achievement of a measure of justice for the millions of victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. Unfortunately, a narrative has emerged among international human rights organizations and commentators that dismisses its achievements and focuses on its flaws.
Adaptive Protection: Strengthening ASEAN’s Human Rights Regime through Scrutiny
Human rights advocates frequently criticize the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for addressing human rights through soft rather than hard law mechanisms. Yet as ASEAN’s human rights system evolves, there are grounds for optimism that it is gradually developing scrutiny mechanisms that increase human rights protection.
The United States and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
Taiwan’s Citizen Judges Act: Part III
The Long Road to Ending Gendered Violence in China
In June 2022, a group of men violently attacked four women at a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan, China, after one of the women rejected a pickup attempt. Video of the attack went viral. What happened next revealed the problem at the heart of gendered violence in China: instead of acknowledging the role gender played in the attack, authorities treated it as a case of gang criminality.
Lessons from Toshiba: Corporate Governance in the Era of Activist Shareholders
The most significant, long-running corporate governance scandal in the history of Japan may finally be coming to a head. Following a series of misdeeds and clashes with activist investors over the past seven years, Toshiba Corporation, an icon of the Japanese business establishment, is in negotiations to sell itself to a Japanese private equity fund.
Decoding the Supreme People’s Court’s Services and Safeguards Opinions
Over the past seven years, the Supreme People’s Court has issued almost 30 documents that contain the phrase “judicial services and safeguards.” These documents have received little attention but they represent what is becoming the SPC’s most important function in the Xi Jinping era: translating Chinese Communist Party policies into guidance for lower-level courts.
Myanmar and the Myriad Efforts Towards International Justice
Taiwan’s Citizen Judges Act: Part II
Lay adjudication can give citizens a meaningful role in the administration of justice and may boost their confidence in the courts. However, the use of lay adjudication also may raise questions about the extent to which systems can deliver a fair trial and the safeguards needed to assure accused persons that the system of adjudication is independent and impartial.
Taiwan’s Citizen Judges Act: Part I
In 2020, after years of advocacy by judicial reformers, Taiwan’s legislature passed the Citizen Judges Act, providing for professional judges to share their benches - and their power - with lay judges in a relatively small subset of criminal cases. The law takes effect January 2023. USALI Perspectives invited six experts in Taiwan’s judicial system to unpack the practical challenges and potential larger significance of this seemingly small step.
Is the UN Charter Order Dead After Ukraine?
The Didi Case and the Party’s Influence over Data Enforcement
Moving Beyond Tolerance to Acceptance
February 24: A Clarifying Moment for China’s Foreign Policy
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has abruptly propelled China much further down the path of policy confrontation with the US outside of Asia. Weakening Washington’s global leadership – specifically its sanctioning power and use of alliances to project power around the world – has become a new Chinese core interest.
Rebooting China’s Charity Law
Hong Kong’s Rights Reckoning: What We Can Expect from the UN Human Rights Committee
In July 2022, the UN Human Rights Committee will complete its first formal review of Hong Kong since the National Security Law (NSL) came into force in 2020. The review will be an important test of whether the local government still views the ICCPR as a meaningful constraint on its actions. It also will be a test of the efficacy of the UN human rights treaty-monitoring system.
A Reputation Tarnished: Reflections on the Resignation of Overseas Judges from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal
Hong Kong has been privileged to have a panel of eminent overseas judges to serve as non-permanent judges of its Court of Final Appeal (CFA). The willingness of overseas judges to serve on the CFA was seen as a vote of confidence in the constitutional model of “One Country, Two Systems,” in which a common law legal system and its values were to be preserved within a socialist sovereign. Now two UK judges have resigned, expressly citing the National Security Law as the reason.